Art Book Review: Anatomy A Step By Step Guide

Step By Step Guide To Anatomy, another useful book which could indeed compliment the other book I reviewed Drawing Dynamic Figures as it goes into detail about the underlying structures but segments the information into more readable categories that ou can follow as you go drawing the body forms.

With 6 main chapters and an introduction which tells a little bit of information about the authors experiences with drawing and learning anatomy which is useful.

The first chapter - Goes through the body and the skeleton bones that make up the body structure and then the chapter progresses onto adding muscle mass over the skeletal structure to make it more realistic, plus a little section on making the bones and the muscles work together to create dynamic movement which was a nice touch.

The second chapter - Is about the head and neck and how you can draw that together and what is quite good about this book is that it has a format and it sticks to it, as we start off with the skull in detail and then adding the muscles over the face which was what the first chapter did with the body form

The third chapter - Is about the torso and how it is made up of the spinal cord, ribcage and pelvis and when added with muscle it can be the most dynamic part of a body with the rest of the body as a whole.

The fourth chapter - Arms and the hands are drawn from the bones upwards and you can see the structures taking shape here now through the excellent drawings that the author has done, each bone is not left out here and you can follow along and draw this stuff as you go along which is what I did.

The fifth chapter - Legs and feet is pretty much the same as the hands and arms chapter and quite possibly in your figure drawings the legs are the most important anatomical structure as they carry most of the weight of what you draw above, so this is useful.

The sixth chapter - Real people, alhough this is a small chapter that deals with putting together everything you have learned in the previous 5 chapters, you can see how your drawings could become once you practice.

All in all this was a great book that shows you the basic anatomy that is there for the human body, from the skeletal structure to the fully finished body structure with excellent drawings for each learning part of the book and the book was easy to follow and understand and could be used as a pre read to the Drawing Dynamic Figures Book above